Scientists monitor for pandemic bird flu mutations

Since its re-appearance in 1997, the H5N1 influenza virus has caused disease and death in millions of birds around the world. However, the number of infections in humans is still relatively small, as from 2003 to the end of June 2008 there had been 385 known cases, of which 243 were fatal. So far, there appear to have been very few cases of human-to-human transmission. Professor Ten Feizi (Imperial College, London) believes that one reason why H5N1 has not yet evolved into an effective pathogen capable of widespread transmission between humans lies in how the virus attaches to the respiratory tract.

She is leading an international research project which has received over £720,000 from the Wellcome Trust to identify the receptor molecules in the human respiratory tract to which viruses attach and to look at how changes in the binding protein on the surface of the virus might increase its ability to attach to the tract and cause infection.

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